Admin

April 7, 2016

Please join us for our annual luncheon to help raise much needed funds for our program. Entrance tickets are $35 for seniors 60 or over and $45 for our guests under 60. Come join us for a delicious buffet lunch prepared by our own Meals on Wheels cooks along with our raffle and silent auction!

Always wanted to know what that “unique” lamp from Great Grandma is worth? Want to know once and for all if that old painting is a masterpiece or throw away? Now is your chance to have your items professionally appraised by a Michaan’s Auctions expert and find out if you have trash or treasure!

Bring your items on Saturday, March 19, 2016 12:00pm-3:00pm to SOS/Meals on Wheels, 2235 Polvorosa Ave. Suite 280, San Leandro, CA 94577. $25.00 includes an appraisal for 1 item and a light lunch. $10 each for up to two additional items. Limit is 3 items maximum. Items will be appraised by appointment only in 10 minute increments.

Thank you to Peet’s Coffee in Castro Valley for choosing SOS/Meals on Wheels to benefit from their annual Holiday Giving! SOS will receive a total of $2,050 from both customer donations and a matching gift of $750 from Peet’s! What a great start to 2016!

Enjoy the photos of our wonderful volunteers who helped us with this event.

Admin

October 26, 2015

Did you know that you can help SOS/Meals on Wheels every time you make a purchase at Amazon.com? Click the banner below and make sure Service Opportunity for Seniors is your selected non-profit organization. Then just use “SMILE.AMAZON.COM” whenever you shop on Amazon!

For eligible purchases at AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price to SOS/Meals on Wheels.

Leave the cooking and dishes behind and help SOS/Meals on Wheels raise much needed funds to support our program!

For one day only, local restaurants in Castro Valley, Hayward, San Leandro, and Oakland will participate in helping SOS/Meals on Wheels raise money to offset the cost of feeding homebound seniors in Central Alameda County and the City of Oakland; by donating 20% of the proceeds of your meal to our agency. All you need to do is bring your appetite and the flyer for the restaurant(s) of your choice!

Invite your family and friends for a fun and worthwhile dine out experience at these participating restaurants:

For the past 6 years, we’ve been quite fortunate to have passionate and generous cyclists from the Greater Bay Area participate in our annual Wheels for Meals Ride. You’ve raised critical funds to support the delivery of meals and wellness checks for homebound seniors throughout Alameda County. 2015 is no exception!

2015 WHEELS FOR MEALS RIDE CANCELLATION

After much deliberation, our Board of Directors, in consultation with our Ride Chair, Peter Holst, and our Safety and Communications Expert, Chris Quirk, has decided to cancel this year’s Ride in the interest of protecting your safety. We hope you understand that this feels like the right thing to do. On July 31, Gov. Brown summed things up perfectly when he declared a state of emergency and said, “California’s severe drought and extreme weather have turned much of the state into a tinderbox.” Compared to last year, three times the number of acres have already burned statewide. So, we’ve been carefully monitoring our courses, the park and the nearby area. Then last Wednesday, more than 2,500 acres burned in the Livermore Valley, including parts of our course.

The decision wasn’t easy, especially given that we have seniors who are depending on us to raise money. It’s quite possible though that there might be additional burn before the Ride, but even if that doesn’t happen, the routes and the park already look quite dismal. Returning for the post-ride celebration, you’d arrive to a park with no grass, and only hard, dry dirt to sit on and possibly be greeted by unique and unpleasant odors from the lake while trying to enjoy your BBQ lunch. Moving forward might risk safety or, at the very least, it’d greatly sacrifice the quality of the event. We only want you to have a great experience, and we also want to keep you safe.

85 SENIORS ARE STILL GOING HUNGRY

We all may be disappointed, but no one will be more affected than our seniors. As previously mentioned, we still have 85 frail, homebound seniors on our waiting list. They desperately need us to rally and raise funds because access to nutritious meals can’t wait until next year! Please continue to reach out to your networks. People are incredibly generous, but we need your help to let them know about this situation. Fire shouldn’t stop us from nourishing our homebound senior neighbors.

YOU CAN STILL HELP

Although there won’t be a physical ride, the need and cause behind the fundraising still exists. Your fundraising page will remain active through Saturday, October 17th. Please encourage others to sign up as Virtual Riders if they’d like to help raise money to provide meals for our waiting seniors. We’re still offeringgreat incentive prizes! Please review the revised prize list to see our current offerings. Prizes may be mailed or picked up after fundraising ends on October 17th (more details to come).

TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS & REFUNDS

We sincerely hope you’ll consider turning your registration fee into a tax-deductible donation. Each registration and donation enables us to reduce the size of our waiting list.

IMPORTANT: If you’d like to turn your registration into a tax-deductible donation, no further action is required. If we don’t hear back from you by Wednesday, September 30th, we’ll send you a donation acknowledgement letter for your tax purposes. If you’d like a refund, please email your request to wfmr@feedingseniors.org and provide the name in which you registered, the names of other cyclists whose registrations you paid for, and the total amount to be refunded.

We’re doing our very best to inform everyone about the cancellation, however, we don’t have full contact information for all of your donors. Please inform them about the cancellation and let them know that if they require a refund, they should email their request to wfmr@feedingseniors.org before September 30th.

Again, please remember that 85 seniors are counting on us!

You’ll likely never meet the seniors whose lives you’re changing with your hard work and generosity, but on their behalf, we sincerely thank you! We appreciate your support and understanding. Let’s all hope that El Nino gives us the rain we need so that things will be better next year!

United in the fight against senior hunger,

Alameda County Meals on Wheels Board of Directors and the Wheels for Meals Ride Staff

Admin

July 30, 2015

Your vote could mean $10,500 for SOS/Meals on Wheels from Safeco Insurance!

Just one click from you could help SOS/Meals on Wheels win up to $10,500 from Safeco Insurance. That’s right — just one click.

SOS/Meals on Wheels is competing in the Safeco Insurance® Make More Happen Contest along with Total Pacific Insurance Brokers. And we need your help!

All this is happening because Total Pacific Insurance Brokers has been selected for a Safeco Insurance Make More Happen Award because of their volunteer service with SOS/Meals on Wheels. The award comes with a $3,000 donation from Safeco Insurance for SOS/Meals on Wheels and entry in the Make More Happen Contest.

Your votes in the Make More Happen Contest could help SOS/Meals on Wheels receive even more money from Safeco. Here’s how it works:

The community is encouraged to vote for their favorite agency-and-charity team featured in the Make More Happen Contest. (We hope that’s us!)

The three agency-charity teams with the most votes will win additional donations from Safeco for the charities. First place gets $10,000, second place $5,000, and third place $3,000. (Of course, we hope we get first place, but we need your help!)

If the total votes made during the contest reach or exceed a vote goal, all charities featured in the contest will receive an additional $500 donation from Safeco Insurance. (This means voting every day is important!)

At SOS/Meals on Wheels, we are so grateful for Total Pacific Insurance Brokers for helping us provide delicious hot meals for homebound seniors!

Of course, everyone who volunteers to make their local communities better deserve to be celebrated, so when you visit the Safeco Insurance Make More Happen Contest, take a little time to read about the great work everyone does and cheer on those that inspire you. Be sure to leave a cheer for SOS/Meals on Wheels or Total Pacific Insurance Brokers! We hope you’ll come away inspired to make a difference.

You can vote once a day from 10 a.m. Pacific Time July 27 through 10 a.m. Pacific Time Aug. 17!

UPDATE!

The Safeco Insurance® Make More Happen Contest has ended, and while Total Pacific Insurance Brokers and SOS/Meals on Wheels team was not one of the top three vote-getters, we truly appreciate the support of everyone who took the time to vote.

Thanks to everyone voting in the contest, the vote goal of 28,000 was exceeded so all 33 charities featured in the contest will receive an additional $500 from Safeco. That means SOS/Meals on Wheels will receive a total of $3,500 on behalf of Total Pacific Insurance Brokers because Total Pacific Insurance Brokers was selected for a Safeco Insurance Make More Happen Award.

Want to find out who took the top spots in the contest? You can see all the winners and Make More Happen Award recipients at safeco.com/make-more-happen.

We congratulate all of the award winners — along with the volunteers who work so hard to make more happen in their communities.